DeepSeek is an artificial intelligence that made a remarkable entrance on the market on Monday, January 27, 2025 by placing itself directly at the top of downloads on the App Store. Here are 6 things to know about DeepSeek.

What is DeepSeek?

DeepSeek is a new generative AI, a conversational agent, which is able to generate text or images. It is also a chatbot - a computer program - which has many features equal to ChatGPT , such as having a conversation, writing in English or Chinese, communicating, solving problems…

Free and open source

In addition to being completely free, DeepSeek is based on an open source model, which makes it more accessible and allows other companies to adopt and adapt it, unlike its competitor ChatGPT. This means that its code is open to the public, allowing anyone to understand how it works and modify it.

Who created DeepSeek?

Founded by a Chinese start-up in Hangzhou, DeepSeek aims to compete with large American companies and seeks to establish itself on the global market.

DeepSeek has already overtaken ChatGPT on the AppStore

Available on computers and smartphones, DeepSeek is a free application which, since Monday, January 27, 2025, has been the most downloaded on the App Store, both in France and in the United States.

It was developed for just $5 million.

But what really makes DeepSeek successful and interesting is, above all, its model, which is much less expensive.

DeepSeek is already less expensive for users, since today it is a completely free model, while most American companies offer a paid subscription in addition to the free version. DeepSeek is also less expensive in its development: according to the specialized media Numerama , DeepSeek was only funded with $5.6 million, compared to $100 million for example for OpenAI. And its AI would be just as efficient as its competitors while operating with reduced capacity chips.

It causes panic in the financial markets

Some consider that the latest AI models presented by DeepSeek, such as V3 or R1, are in some cases more efficient than those of American companies.

According to the EuroNews television channel , several shares of large technology companies in the United States have fallen on Wall Street, the American stock exchange, since January 27, 2025, including the company Nvidia, the world leader in computer computing and artificial intelligence, which plunged by 17% at the close on Wall Street on Monday.

[via GQ France]